THE SUGAR PINE 



IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERISTICS 



BY SAMUEL B. DETWILER 



THE "Man of Grass," as the Indians styled David 

 Douf^las, the intrepid English plant collector, dis- 

 covered the Great Sugar Pine ninety years ago. 

 These "truly grand" pines were too tall to climb, so the 

 botanist used his gun to bring down several of the large 

 cones for his collection. The fusillade quickly brought 

 eight painted and well-armed Indians on the scene, who 

 displayed unmistakable signs of hostihty. Douglas mod- 

 estly records the incident in his journal: "I came on an 

 abundance of Pintis lambertiana. I put myself in posses- 

 sion of a great number of perfect cones, but circimistances 

 obliged me to leave the 

 ground hastily with only 

 three — a party of eight 

 Indians endeavored to de- 

 stroy me." 



Douglas named this mag- 

 nificent tree Finns lamberti- 

 ana in honor of his friend 

 Doctor Lambert, a distin- 

 guished botanist and author 

 of a noted work on pines. 

 Forty-two years after 

 Douglas' exciting discovery 

 of this tree, John Muir, a 

 man whom his friends loved 

 to call "John o' the Moun- 

 tains," made his first trip 

 into the Sierras. He has left 

 us a legacy of the most 

 beautiful and vivid word 

 pictures of our Western 

 wonderlands. At a meeting 

 of the Sierra Club, he gave 

 the following account of his 

 first acquaintance with "the 

 Sun-tree of the Sierras": 



" For the first time I saw 

 the giants of the Sierra 

 woods in all their glory. 

 Sugar pines, more than 200 

 feet high, with their long 

 arms outspread over the 

 spiry silver firs and the 

 yellow pine, liboccdrus 

 and Douglas spruce. . . . 

 The sugar pine seemed to 

 me the priest of the woods, 

 ever addressing the sur- 

 rounding trees — everybody 

 that has ears to hear — and 

 blessing them. Few are 

 280 



A GIANT SUGAR PINE IN THE ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST, 

 CALIFORNIA 



This is a splendid specimen, six feet in diameter, and is typical of the tree at 

 its best. It shows very clearly the characteristic bark, deeply and irregularly 

 furrowed into long, narrow plates, as well as the huge cone, by which the sugar 

 pine may be instantly identified. 



altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their ser- 

 mons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people 

 in general could be got into the woods, even for once, 

 to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in 

 the way of forest preservation would vanish." 



The extreme geographical range of the sugar pine 

 covers a narrow strip about 1000 miles long, extending 

 from Marion county in western Oregon, through the Sierra 

 and Coast Ranges of CaHfomia to Mount San Pedro in 

 lower CaHfomia. While it is not entirely a CaHfomia 

 tree, like the Big Tree, the Golden State contains the 



principal wealth of sugar 

 pine. Of the three most 

 important lumber-produc- 

 ing trees of California, sugar 

 ]jine ranks below redwood 

 and western \-elIow pine in 

 quantity of standing tim- 

 ber and annual output of 

 lumber, but in money 

 value it holds first place. 

 The amoimt of standing 

 sugar pine timber of com- 

 mercial value as reported by 

 the Forest Service is about 

 three billion feet in south- 

 western Oregon and thirty- 

 nine billion feet in Califor- 

 nia. While there is a large 

 amount of sugar pine in the 

 forests of the Coast Range 

 north of San Francisco, the 

 great bulk of the timber is 

 found in the Sierra Nevada 

 Mountains. The largest 

 individual trees and finest 

 bodies of sugar pine are 

 found on the western slopes 

 of the Sierra Nevada Moun- 

 tains from Tulare to Eldo- 

 rado counties, California. 

 The Sierra forests are noted 

 the world over for their vari- 

 ety and magnificence. Helen 

 Hunt Jackson has given us 

 a beautiful description of 

 her first impression of this 

 wonderful region : She says : 

 "Now we began to climb 

 and to enter upon forests — 

 pines and firs and cedars. 

 It seemed as if the whole 



